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One day in early spring he saw two hen-hawks, that were circling and screaming high in air, approach each other, extend a claw, and, clasping them together, fall toward the earth, flapping and struggling as if they were tied together; on nearing the ground they separated and soared aloft again.
Uncle Eb used to say that its one long, naked branch that swung and creaked near the top of it, like a sign of hospitality on the highway of the birds, was two hundred feet above ground. There were a few stubs here and there upon its shaft the roost of crows and owls and hen-hawks.
For the rest, he has told himself in his undoubted words how he swam and hunted, shot hen-hawks and partridges, caught trout, and tracked bear in the snow, and ran wild, yet not wholly free of the call-whistle of his master-passion: "I ran quite wild," he wrote a quarter-century later, "and would, I doubt not, have willingly run wild till this time, fishing all day long, or shooting with an old fowling-piece; but reading a good deal, too, on rainy days, especially in Shakespeare and 'The Pilgrim's Progress, and any poetry or light books within my reach.
The hawk is aërial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts.
The cardinal sings from the hammock, and so does the Carolina wren. From the same place comes the song of a Maryland yellow-throat. There, too, the hen-hawks are screaming. At my feet are blue violets and white houstonia. Vines, thinly covered with fresh leaves, straggle over the walls, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, grapevine, and at least one other, the name of which I do not know.
The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts.
One day in early spring he saw two hen-hawks that were circling and screaming high in air, approach each other, extend a claw, and, clasping them together, fall toward the earth flapping and struggling as if they were tied together; on nearing the ground they separated and soared aloft again.
"Look here, Hiram," said the Cap'n, stopping him on the porch, "it's all right to make loud talk to them Double-yer T. Double-yers, but there ain't any sense in makin' it to each other. You and me can't run this tavern no more'n hen-hawks can run a revival. Them wimmen "
Almost all the others brown thrushes, bluebirds, song sparrows, kingbirds, hen-hawks, nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, woodpeckers, etc. simply tried to avoid being seen, to draw or drive us away, or paid no attention to us. We used to wonder how the woodpeckers could bore holes so perfectly round, true mathematical circles. We ourselves could not have done it even with gouges and chisels.
Then you hear the chip-squirrels chirrup, and the red squirrels mock; then the hen-hawks chatter and shriek in the air, and the crows caw and clamor; the thrushes and swamp robins bandy their boasts in challenges of music; the blue jay gossips, and the cuckoo cries. "Whose cabin is this?" do you inquire? Tilly Troffater's.
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